Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day

[bigdamnprincipal]

Good weather had fallen over Fandom this morning, so the picnic conditions were looking fantastic. The bonfire was there for good measure, along with the makings of s'mores, because it was almost truly summer, right?

There was plenty of food, and there were tables and chairs set up all across the lawn with varying degrees of glitter stuck to them. Everything was ready for another welcome picnic!

[OCD-free! Welcome the new folks gently! Or not!]

Comments

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"Okay, Henry," Arden said. "I'm gonna need you to look around this whole picnic and then you can tell me whether you think I'm having you on."

She turned slightly and waved a hand at the...well, everything. Everyone.

"I don't know when or where you're from--" Look, bohemia was an aesthetic as far as she knew, not a location. "--But the sooner you accept that this isn't a trick, or a dream, or a post-death experience, the sooner you're gonna get your feet under you. Okay?"

[thatsmysword]

"Skalitz," Henry said, dazed, as his eyes automatically tracked her gesture and... absorbed none of it. "I'm from Silver Skalitz. Or... Rattay on Sasau, now, I suppose."

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

Smaller, Arden. Let's go smaller.

"Okay, Henry. Are you hungry? Have you, uh, broken your fast yet or whatever?" Arden, please don't try. "There's plenty of food around if you'd like to have something to eat."

[thatsmysword]

... honey, yes, don't try to medieval Catholic.

Hungry. Now there was a word Henry could grab a solid hold of. "... I am quite peckish, actually," he said. "Could probably eat a whole horse."

Food! Food, he could comprehend.

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

Food was always a good choice when dealing with a guy around Henry's age, honestly.

"Well, I don't think we've got horse on the menu, but we've got most anything else." Yeah. They totes had food a medieval peasant from Bohemia would be expecting. Totes. "Do you have any dietary restrictions or anything? Like...food allergies or religious prohibitions or...?"

[thatsmysword]

"... I don't know what any of that means, sorry," Henry ventured, and they were back to being confused again. "The, uh, digetry restriction and the food alurgees."

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

Yeah, that was on her.

"Uh, anything your religion says you aren't allowed to eat?" Arden asked. "Or any foods that you don't eat because they make you sick? Itchy? Have trouble breathing? Food that you just don't like?"

[thatsmysword]

"Itchy?" Henry echoed, concerned.

One day he would understand the full and terrible nature of the faux pas he was about to make. And that would, further on, likely stop him from saying something similarly stupid to a friend-to-be.

But today would not be that day. "Wait, is that what happened to make your skin that colour? You have a lurgee?"

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

Arden stared at him. And stared. And stared.

And then burst out laughing, hard enough she doubled over. "Oh goddess," she wheezed. "I'm the first Black...oh probably the first not-white person you've ever met. Oh goddess."

Sorry, not sorry, Henry, but she totally got to laugh at you.

"Okay, okay, hang on, lemme catch my breath," she said, flapping a hand at him. "So. Okay. No. I was born with this color skin. Everybody in...uh, you're from--" nope, did not remember the name "--has skin roughly around your color. Well, when you move away from where you are, and go to distant lands, err, across the seas and stuff, you find people with other skin colors."

And other ethnographic differences, but she wasn't going into that right now. "I actually have very, very light-colored skin for my, uh, people. They get much darker than I do." Were we going to explain being mixed race? Absolutely not!

She was going to let him know his question was rude as hell, but she figured she'd give him a second to wrap his head around this first.

[thatsmysword]

"Oh," Henry said, and his eyebrows knitted up a bit. "Well, that's interesting!"

He meant that! Sincerely!

"So what's your people like?"

We-- well. At least he was asking questions now. That was, uh. Some kind of win.

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"Uh..."

Oh goddess. How to explain--

Nah. She definitely wasn't up to all that.

"They're...people. Probably a lot like your people. Some people are great, and others are assholes. Moms hug their kids when they're happy and yell when they're angry and sometimes both at the same time when they're scared. A lot of them go to church on Sundays and praise the lord, other folks don't. Some folks drink on special occasions, some drink more than they should, some don't drink at all. You know. People. We have a rich musical history and cooking is important to us and we've gone through a lot of really hard stuff, because sometimes people think that anybody with a different skin color than them are not as good as they are. Maybe not even as human. Have you ever been treated like that? Like your life isn't worth as somebody else's? Like people are better than you, just because of something they were born with?"

[thatsmysword]

"You mean like nobles do with the rest of us?" Henry asked, tilting his head. He was certainly thinking of some kind of nobles, yes. "They do all that because of that?"

At least with the nobility there was that bit about them being chosen by God or whatever. Though Henry was a touch fuzzy on that one, as well.

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"Yep," Arden said quietly. "Worse than that, really. Spent a couple of centuries going to the lands where my people could be found, kidnapping them, squeezing them onto ships too tightly that half of them died in route, and then sold the survivors off like livestock to be enslaved for not only their lives, but their children's and children's children on and on and on."

Wow. This got real real fast.

[thatsmysword]

And for the first time on this disorienting morning, Henry's thoughts travelled back to Skalitz. No kidnappings, no. There hadn't been anyone worth ransom. Just... death. Terror.

He shook his head to clear it. "I am very sorry," he said. "That sounds monstrous."

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"It was and it lasted for centuries and we're still dealing with the fallout from that," Arden said. "Because even if the practice has still gone away, the thinking that some folks are better than others because of their skin color still linger."

And they also still had class issues! All the prejudice that Henry knew from before and a whole slew of new ones!

"So if you see people with skin colors you're not expecting here, or other differences than you're used to, just understand that it's not something wrong with them, they're just not like you. And if you ask them a question like you asked me, they might be terribly insulted or have their feelings hurt."

She gave him a smile. "I know you didn't mean to be rude or hurtful, so I'm not offended. But I did wanna make sure you knew that, because you don't seem like somebody who wants to hurt people like that."

[thatsmysword]

Henry had gone a touch pale(r) as she was speaking, yes. "... I didn't intend to hurt your feelings," he said. "I'm sorry. All of this is a bit..."

He lifted a hand, as if to indicate it all.

"But no. I would... very much prefer not to hurt anyone. And I'm sorry, again, if your feelings were hurt. I won't do it again. Ah. On this, at least."